or them, but provide for himself alone a fourth of the food
in a fourth of the time, and in the remaining three fourths of his time
be employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of shoes, having no
partnership with others, but supplying himself all his own wants?

Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food only and not at
producing everything.

Probably, I replied, that would be the better way; and when I hear you
say this, I am myself reminded that we are not all alike; there
are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different
occupations.

Very true.

And will you have a work better done when the workman has many
occupations, or when he has only one?

When he has only one.

Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt when not done at
the right time?

No doubt.

For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of the business is
at leisure; but the doer must follow up what he is doing, and make the
business his first object.

He must.

And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully
and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is
natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.

Undoubtedly.

Then more than four citizens will be required; for the husbandman will
not make his own plough or mattock, or other implements of agriculture,
if they are to be good for anything. Neither will the builder make
his tools--and he too needs many; and in like manner the weaver and
shoemaker.

True.

Then carpenters, and smiths, and many other artisans, will be sharers in
our little State, which is already beginning to grow?

True.

Yet even if we add neatherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen, in order
that our husbandmen may have oxen to plough with, and builders as well
as husbandmen may have draught cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces
and hides,--still our State will not be very large.

That is true; yet neither will it be a very small State which contains
all these.

Then, again, there is the situation of the city--to find a place where
nothing need be imported is wellnigh impossible.

Impossible.

Then there must be another class of citizens who will bring the required
supply from another city?

There must.

But if the trader goes empty-handed, having nothing which they require
who would supply his need, he will come back empty-handed.

That is certain.

And therefore what they pr